Mother Provides Alibi for Defendant in Murder Case

Murder defendant Justin Merriman was home in his pajamas, sleeping off a hangover, on the day prosecutors contend he killed a 20-year-old college student and disposed of her body, his mother testified Wednesday.

Beverlee Sue Merriman, 53, told jurors she saw her son three times that day in November 1992.

She heard no strange noises--no screams or yelling--around the time of the killing in her Ventura townhome, she said. And she said that blood she cleaned off her white-carpeted stairs came from a gash on her son’s head--not from a slain woman being carried out her front door.

“He didn’t leave the house that I saw,” Beverlee Sue Merriman said.

But her testimony was fiercely attacked by Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Bamieh--the same prosecutor who sent her to state prison last year for conspiring to intimidate witnesses in her son’s case.

Beverlee Sue Merriman pleaded guilty to two felonies and was released on parole this month.

Dressed in a gray striped suit, she walked into Ventura County Superior Court on Wednesday afternoon and smiled at her 28-year-old son, whom she said she hadn’t seen in two years because of a court order banning jail visits.

Justin Merriman, agitated earlier in the day by a request to photograph his mother in court, looked at her and sat quietly at the defense table, a gray turtleneck covering his mother’s name tattooed on the back of his neck.

He is facing murder, rape, conspiracy and related charges stemming from the 1992 slaying of Santa Monica College student Katrina Montgomery. He faces a possible death sentence if convicted.

For the past four weeks, prosecutors have presented evidence to show he killed Montgomery and used a network of white supremacist gang members to conceal the crime.

Two former gang members, Ryan Bush and Larry Nicassio, told jurors they saw the defendant rape, stab and bludgeon Montgomery to death while spending the night at the Merriman home after a party.

Defense attorneys have suggested Bush and Nicassio lied to protect themselves from murder charges and may be the killers. They opened their case Wednesday by calling Merriman’s mother.

On the morning in question, she said, she heard her son come home before daybreak. She heard male voices in the house and at one point looked out her bedroom window and saw a bald-headed boy urinating on her patio. When she got up, around 7 a.m., she found blood on the stairs. She cleaned it up and about an hour later confronted her son, asking who got hurt. “I did, check this out,” he responded, according to her testimony, showing her a gash on his forehead sustained during a fight the night before.

Beverlee Sue Merriman said she left the house at 1:30 p.m., and spoke with her son. She said she returned home at about 5:30 p.m. and he was there.

The next morning, she said, she called a carpet cleaner to remove the bloodstains as well as a coffee spill and beer stench from her son’s bedroom.

As the carpet cleaner was leaving, she said, two Los Angeles Police Department detectives arrived at her door, asking to speak to Justin.

Contrary to the testimony of one of those officers, Beverlee Sue Merriman testified that she invited the detectives into her home. She said they walked up the stairs and looked in her son’s room, then left.

During a volatile cross-examination, Bamieh seized on the difference between the detective’s testimony and the mother’s on that point and other possible inconsistencies.

Prosecutors allege Justin Merriman and his mother arranged jail visits in such a way that he could talk to Nicassio and persuade him to keep quiet about the case. Testimony is scheduled to resume today.